In its war against Yugoslavia, Nato has tried to
silence all debate, criticism and dissent. The most
grotesque instance of this was the bombing of the Serbian
television building, killing an estimated 10 civilians
and injuring dozens more. Prime Minister Tony Blair
described this as entirely justified. The
attack was allegedly carried out in the name of Truth,
since the station produces propaganda. The
image-conscious Blair explained that television is part
of the apparatus which keeps a political
leader in power, so camera operators, make-up ladies and
janitors are therefore legitimate targets.

Perhaps Nato also hoped reports by Western journalists
in Belgrade  filed from the TV building until it
was hit  would become collateral damage. Certainly
in Britain politicians have sought to stifle opinions and
facts they do not like, most conspicuously by portraying
John Simpsons reports as Serbian propaganda. What
are they scared of?

First, they are worried by suggestions that the
Serbian people are united against Nato. Defence Secretary
George Robertson argued unconvincingly that if an opinion
poll were conducted in Serbia it would not show the
united opposition Simpson had reported. Second, they are
uncomfortable about interviewers questioning the success
of Nato strategy. Development Secretary Claire Short, for
example, did a bad impersonation of the clever
dick questions asked by the likes of John Humphrys.
Third, politicians have been rattled by reports of
civilian damage and death caused by Nato, which began to
come out within the first 24 hours of the bombing
campaign and have continued steadily since.

I only, as Nato spokesman, give out information
when it is totally accurate and confirmed, Jamie
Shea told Channel Four News. In fact Nato information has
been about as accurate as its bombs  several of
which have landed outside Yugoslavias borders. In
this interview, Shea was giving out the totally
accurate and confirmed information that two
Yugoslav pilots had been captured after their planes were
shot down over Bosnia while they were attempting to
attack Nato peacekeepers there. Nato later admitted no
pilots had been captured and the MiG fighters did not
have ground attack capability. We have since been fed a
string of stories  that 20 schoolteachers were
killed in front of their pupils, that Pristina stadium
was being used as a concentration camp, that the
paramilitary leader Arkan was in Kosovo, that President
Slobodan Milosevics family had fled the country,
that Kosovo Albanian leaders had been executed  all
of which turned out to be false.

Nato even lied about its intention to bomb Serbian
television. We were told people in Yugoslavia do not have
access to the Western side of the story  though in
fact they do  and that airstrikes would follow
unless Serbian TV carried six hours a day of Western news
programming. When Belgrade offered to accept the six
hours in exchange for six minutes of Yugoslav news on
Western networks, Nato backtracked, saying it had only
meant it would bomb transmitters also used for military
communications. Nato also explicitly assured the
International Federation of Journalists it would not
target media workers. What are we to make of an
organisation which kills others because it says they are
lying, but consistently lies itself?

Hitting civilian targets has been the most sensitive
issue for Nato. The technique for stage-managing the
release of such information is to begin with a bare-faced
lie, in the hope that the first headlines will leave a
lasting impression. This is followed by an admission of
limited culpability, designed to indicate Natos
honesty and openness whilst continuing to imply the enemy
is at least partly to blame. This procedure was
established over the damage caused to civilian areas of
Pristina, which Nato initially tried to pin on the Serbs.
They then admitted one bomb may have been
seduced off the target  as if the Serbs
were willing reluctant Nato bombs to hit them. The same
strategy was adopted to explain the attack on the refugee
convoy: the Serbs were blamed, then Nato admitted to
hitting one tractor.

British broadcasters have drawn some self-flattering
comparisons, suggesting that whilst Serbian TV is a
propaganda machine, our news is impartial and balanced.
It is true that some has been, particularly reporting by
correspondents in Serbia able to see the results of Nato
bombardment. But back in the studio there is a tendency
to stick slavishly to the Nato line. When Simpson
reported from the site of the downed US Stealth aircraft,
his colleagues in London insisted Nato had not yet
confirmed a plane had been shot down. Similarly,
Skys presenter tried to question the credibility of
a report by their Belgrade correspondent Tim Marshall on
the bombing of the refugee convoy, even though Marshall
maintained his sources were reliable.

Of course, even in London newsrooms there are
honourable exceptions. Channel Fours Alex Thompson
introduced some Nato cockpit video footage by remarking
pointedly that it was impossible to verify
independently. Yet his self-consciously even-handed
use of this phrase was striking precisely because it was
a departure from the norm. Most of the time, official
briefings are faithfully reproduced complete with
pictures supplied by Nato and the Ministry of Defence,
and the prepared soundbites of politicians and military
spokesmen are parroted by journalists. For example, when
it became clear that airstrikes were precipitating a
humanitarian crisis rather than achieving the stated
purpose of preventing one, Nato covered its embarrassment
by saying it needed to catch up. This
euphemistic description of intensified bombing was
dutifully repeated by Mark Laity, the BBCs man in
Brussels, on both the evenings bulletins.

The problems with the coverage run deeper than an
insufficiently questioning attitude toward official
sources, however. Some journalists have actively taken
the part of Nato. When Robert Fisks article in the Independent
contradicted the outlandish claim that the Serbs had
bombed Pristina themselves, one British television
correspondent stood up at the briefing in Brussels and
urged his fellow reporters not to ask Nato any awkward
questions. Allegiances have been signalled in more subtle
ways too. Reports which take us on board planes flying
missions over Yugoslavia invite viewers to identify with
Nato just as much as the bombs eye view
cockpit video. Coming under fire with the Kosovo
Liberation Army inside Kosovo, Jonathan Charles spoke
romantically of the men who dream of liberating
Kosovo as a symbol of hope for ethnic
Albanians, while Channel Five News offered a
human-interest story about the family of a Kosovo
Albanian who had left Britain to join the KLA.

Many seem to have bought into the simplistic
Good versus Evil morality with which
politicians have framed the conflict, and have joined in
with Natos demonisation of Milosevic and the Serbs.
A Panorama special exhorted Nato leaders to
prosecute Milosevic for war crimes. Brian Barron went to
Montenegro in search of the grizzly details
of the troubled history of the Milosevic
clan. Jeremy Paxman suggested a programme of
thoroughgoing imposed de-Nazification for
post-war Serbia, echoing the view voiced by everyone from
government ministers to the Sun newspaper that the
Serbs are the new Nazis.

The heavy-handed moralism has made it difficult to ask
questions, especially about the plight of refugees. Yet
questions demand to be asked: about the reasons for their
flight, and the tales of atrocities they bring with them.
Judging from British news reports, these must be the
first airstrikes in history no-one has fled. Even when
told they had been bombed by Nato, survivors of the
attack on the convoy blamed the Serbs. This gives some
indication of the reliability of refugees
statements. From the viewpoint of ethnic Albanians who
welcome Nato action, such statements are understandable.
But this does not explain why Western reporters should
accept them, nor why the hundreds of thousands of Serbs
displaced Nato attacks are routinely ignored.

Rather than admitting they dont know what is
happening inside Kosovo, correspondents on the border
repeat every horror story. The fact such accounts are
uncorroborated is countered by the mantra that
refugees claims are consistent and
credible, despite sometimes flimsy evidence. The
experience of Bosnia is cited as support for the tales of
systematic mass rape, for example. Yet
despite claims that more than 50,000 Muslim women were
raped by Serbs in Bosnia, a 1993 United Nations
commission scaled down to 2,400 victims  including
Serbs and Croats  based on 119 documented cases.

No doubt civilians are being killed and terrorised
from their homes by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, just as
Serbian civilians are being killed and terrorised by Nato
bombing across Yugoslavia as a whole. Thats war.
But the focus on atrocity stories obscures what little we
do know of what is happening: a military campaign against
armed separatists. Occasionally, this hidden story leaks
through. Panorama repeatedly mentioned attacks on
KLA strongholds. A Newsnight report on
video evidence of the killings of civilians
let slip that at least one of the six
civilians was a KLA member and another a
strong KLA supporter. But it generally appears no KLA
members are ever killed, and no-one is killed by them.

Every war produces atrocity stories, and it is
difficult to chart a course through propaganda and
rumour. A useful start would be to discount the obviously
ludicrous claims, such as the story of the mass
graves. Nato asked us not only to accept a grainy
aerial photograph as evidence of atrocities, but also to
believe that the Serbs forced ethnic Albanians to dress
up in orange uniforms and bury the dead in neat
rows of graves facing Mecca, in the words of Nato
general Guiseppe Marani. Presumably this too was
totally accurate and confirmed?